the venture bros

If you're not excited now, you never will be. The Entertainment Earth blog has announced that a company called BifBangPow will be making action figures and bobbleheads of the characters on Adult Swim's The Venture Bros.

Frankly, it's overdue. Action figures are usually reserved for kid's or cult movies and television shows, and Team Venture is definitely the later. In fact, other than the DVDs and a set of exclusive mail-order t-shirts, there really hasn't been that much supplementary merchandise for the show (and the midnight timeslot of the latest season doesn't help promotional matters).

One popular rumor regarding the merchandising delay is negotiations between Adult Swim and Doc Hammer, Jackson Publick and company over who gets what share of the loot. One can only hope that, if true, that issue has been resolved.

Admit it, you'll only be buying the figures in order to sleep with your very own Doctor Girlfriend. Or maybe that's just me.

Ooh! Is it that time of year again when I get to ask for things and then receive none of them? Fantastic.

Okay, I don't ask for very much each Festivus, but all my choices are very carefully made. I'll even put aside my desperate need to hang out with The Roots for a day or wish to surgically replace my own legs with those of Blake Lively. I can work on all that stuff next year. For 2009, these are all I want for Festivus!

(S04E08) My heart is all aflutter. Talk about ending on a high note (Venture Bros. will return to finish the season in a few months, Lost-style). Just like "The Better Man," this Doc Hammer-penned episode was the perfect balance of great story and VB's signature comedy. There were so many great moments, quotable lines, and much-missed familiar faces, this quickly turned into one of my favorite episodes from any season, right up there with "Escape to the House of Mummies, Part II" and "Twenty Years to Midnight."

(S04E07) Wow. And wow again. Not only did we actually get closure on a few issues that had the potential to drag on forever (Archie and Betty/Veronica style), but we got one the best episodes of the season. I carefully considered whether my love for the Order of the Triad was making me a bit biased, but I honestly think this episode was a perfect example of advancing characters without sacrificing the comedy that made us fall in love with The Venture Bros. in the first place.

Also, they introduced the hottest VB lady yet, and I dare anyone to try and convince me otherwise.

I figured I may as well make this list before I food-punish myself into a turkey-flavored coma this Thursday. It's true, television has gone through its ups and downs in the past year. A bit of residual anger still bubbles within me when I think of Jay Leno shuffling not-so-subtly around Conan O'Brien or the fact that I'll never be as daring or funny as the writers behind Peep Show, but Thanksgiving is not meant for dwelling on silly things like that (it's what the rest of the year's for). Let's review my list of a few (TV-related) things that I'm thankful for, and then I promise I'll let everyone leave and stuff their faces.

Community: I've liked this show since the pilot and I'm thrilled to see it taking off. In the beginning, I enjoyed its snappy dialogue and overall attitude, but feared that it wouldn't find a direction until NBC got impatient and chopped it from the schedule.

(S04E06) This episode was a rare star-studded treat for Venture Bros. Really honing in on the idea of adult aftermath in the lives of boy adventurer types, Jackson Publick introduced a robot boy, boy detective brothers (Seth Green and John Hodgman), former Wonder Boy (Patton Oswalt) and the return of Action Johnny (Brendon Small). Never before have so many guest voices (okay, four) been crammed into an installment, bringing the entire audience to an immediate nerdgasm.

(S04E05) This episode was certainly a surprise in many respects. It was one of the funnier installments of the season so far. It also brought back a lot of old themes and cleared up some incomplete storylines that had started to gather dust. On one hand, I'm glad that those have been resolved, because most of them were revealed to be kind of irrelevant anyway, but I also felt as though it was rushed, like, five loose ends from old major arcs had to be hastily tied up in twenty-some minutes. Well, it's better than continuing to string us along, right?

(S04E04) It's enough to make you stop believing when tears come fast and furious, in a town called Malice. Yeah. I totally just made that up. Right now. Free words of wisdom, from me to you.

This episode wasn't spectacular for the purposes of laughing-out-loud. It was funny in a few moments, yes, but I spent most of the twenty-some minutes resting my chin on my fist, brow furrowed with concern. All the characters are going through some heavy stuff right now, and that inner turmoil, dealing with loss and identity and love, came bubbling to the surface in this episode. Doing so, again, isn't much of a gut-buster, but it makes for beautiful character development. Can you tell I have faith in this show? Maybe a little too much.

(S04E03) I swear to you, dear reader, that I do my best to stay somewhat objective when reviewing The Venture Bros. It's tough, though, when the writers keep knocking them out of the park like this. We're only a few episodes in, but I'm already enjoying things more than I did with season three, and it's not just because this episode had mind-blowing prog rock and UPS guys with the Shining.

(S04E02) First things first. If you are not a connoisseur of '90s superhero cartoons or a huge nerd that has been closely following Venture Bros. news all the way through production, you may have missed out on the full "Handsome Ransom" experience. That is not to say the unaware couldn't have a good time, but things were made ten times funnier if a viewer knew that the not-so-pure Captain Sunshine was voiced by Kevin Conroy, aka Batman.

(S04E01) Is it going too far calling Venture Bros. the Lost of animated shows? Because, especially when one compares it to other programs in the [adult swim] line-up, it definitely is. While shows like Robot Chicken are custom-tailored for short attention spans (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), VB does a beautiful job of rewarding the loyal who take time to learn and love the show.

You know how else it's also kind of like Lost? It's really damn confusing sometimes. It wasn't until the very end of the premiere, when bits of my brain were coming out my ears, that I finally managed to put most of the story together in my head, though I knew I would have to watch it at least once to more to seriously understand. I see what you did there, Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick. Real sneaky.

In case you have not heard already, the fourth season of Venture Bros. arrives on [adult swim] at midnight on October 18 (meaning the night of the 18th, technically the morning of the 19th). Mark your calendars.

This news has already been floating around for a while, thanks to sites like the Mantis-Eye Experiment, but things have been confirmed by Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer during their panel at DragonCon. Some footage of this has finally been released by AdultSwim.com, so you can stop crawling around YouTube for people's crappy cell phone recordings.

I'm sure at one point or another in every little kid's life, he or she has wanted to have a robot BFF. All the potential for wacky fun and scientific misadventures would make up for the inevitable human/binary language barrier, and, when I think about it, I still totally want a robot buddy. I mean, from my time on this Earth, of two things I am sure: Lists are fun and robots are awesome. So, despite the fact that my age numerically suggests I shouldn't be thinking about this sort of stuff, I am all over this list.

I should also note that, upon completion of this depressingly nerdy post, I am legally obligated to punch myself in the face for a solid fifteen minutes and then steal my own lunch money. Let's just get this over with, shall we? Here are the top eleven robot buddies from TV, in no particular order, because each robot is special in its own way. Also, I don't want any readers to kill me for not ranking to their liking.

(S03E13) It feels like the third season started only yesterday, but it's over, kids. Even though it didn't end with a massive cliff-hanger like in previous seasons, it certainly went out with a bang. Because the lovely, creative people that make this wonderful show can feel our pain in waiting, Season Four is already in production and actors will be recording next month. Calm yourselves. If you're still looking for goodness to get your fix, check out our VB-related posts.

Check out this new AdultSwim.com interview with voice actor Michael Sinterniklaas, who plays, among other characters in the cartoon world, Dean Venture of The Venture Bros. In this video, you get to watch him get his hair cut. Oh, and he talks about The Venture Bros. but that's really secondary to my original intention of making sure you coiffure-fetish folks get your fill even on a TV site.

The best part is his Patrick Warburton impression, which was brief but sounded pretty spot-on. Apparently, all it takes to do a decent Brock voice is to drop your tone down, groan with frustration and say, "Ahh, boys..." Sinterniklaas also shares a story about one of his biggest fans' Dean tattoo, which is sweet and further enforces that the folks on Venture Bros. are super wonderful to their fans. Click after the jump and check it out.